NEW YORK -- Nearly a year and a month into his Major League career, Nolan McLean did something he never had before.
One of the sport’s finest curveball practitioners gave up a homer off his curveball.
The offending pitch left McLean’s hand in the second inning of a 6-4 loss to the Yankees on Friday. It landed a Statcast-projected 377 feet away courtesy of Cody Bellinger, who deposited it into Yankee Stadium’s short porch in right for a tiebreaking three-run homer.
For 13 months, McLean’s curveball presented as one of the best pitches in baseball. According to the Stuff+ model, which grades individual pitches based on velocity, movement, spin and other factors, McLean entered Friday’s play sporting the fourth-best curveball among qualified big leaguers, behind only Jacob Misiorowski, Braxton Ashcraft and Paul Skenes. His average spin rate on that pitch led the Majors. But the Yankees proved to be the rare team ready for it, going 3-for-3 off McLean curveballs that ended at-bats.
Mostly, Bellinger was ready for it. In a harbinger of things to come, Bellinger singled off a wicked curve near the bottom of the strike zone in the first inning, grounding a ball through the right side to advance an early Yankees rally. An inning later, with two men on base in a 3-2 count, McLean threw a similar pitch to Bellinger, who golfed it over the right-field fence.
All told, McLean allowed a career-high 10 hits over five innings, while also giving up five runs. The performance dampened his long-shot bid to become the National League Rookie of the Year, raising his ERA to 3.24. Although McLean has accomplished the most of any NL rookie pitcher, Reds first baseman Sal Stewart is the favorite for that award given his 31-homer, 107-RBI season. Stewart leads the Majors in RBIs.